Inferno seems kind of weak?

[Ostrava of Boletaria]

I've been playing two concurrent playthroughs - one with a focus on radiance and the other with a focus on inferno. Inferno feels much weaker than radiance early on - preacher hammer does like 50 more damage per swing compared to the cultist staff, you get blessed weapon almost immediately which lets you do crazy dps when dual wielding, and the only inferno spell I found 5 hours into the game was a flamethrower spell from a vendor you have to solve a puzzle to unlock (it's decent, but it doesnt seem to stun weak enemies so I wonder what's the point over just using a wide sweeping melee weapon which is a lot safer and doesnt cost mana)

Wondering if it becomes a more interesting option later on, because I genuinely just don't find a lot of inferno stuff while there seems to be tons of support for radiance.

[The_K00lDude]

There are two better damage spells so far in my opinion, but the rest are pretty much stat buff spells

[brownie689]

Get rid of that junk staff and equip two of those axes you get near the beginning of the game. They do physical and fire damage. They shred enemies like crazy and set them on fire.

[Scraps]

Haven't gotten too far yet, partially because I rolled wizard first and gave up on it since it does feel very weak, but I heard there's good options late in the game.

It reminds me Dark Souls 3 Faith builds where you get a damage option fairly early (Lightning Spear), but your good options are like, at the second-to-final area (Great Lightning Spear), final boss (Sunlight Spear), and final area of the final DLC (Lightning Arrow). I'm not too sure if it's as egregious.

[Kurague]

Forget about the two axes. You need to 2-hand the sword at the beginning up until you can get the Bloodthirster. It deals as much damage as dual wielding the 2 axes, but without sucking in heavyattack damage.

It's also a one-handed sword, so it has the best heavy attack lunge in the game(Forward dashes and attacks in every attack). The Bloodthrister is also a one handed sword with inferno scaling, and it heals you with each kill.

PS: The reason why you feel like inferno is weak, is because the absolute genious developers decided to put all the Fire Resistant enemies at the start of the game. I highly recommend you up some radiance(18 max, maybe 23 if you want to get one of the big spells), since eventually you'll get a ring that'll allow you to cast RADIANT MAGIC with your pyromancy or Entropy focus, which means you'll get the full scaling of your Pyromancy stat spell focus for your radiance spells.

PS2: Radiance is DEFINITELY much stronger than inferno at all points of the game, by the way. There are just too many Radiance, Agi or Strength weapons in the game and so few Inferno weapons. It's almost like Developers didn't want you to play inferno.

Almost like inferno magic is the evil god Adyr's magic. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Ostrava of Boletaria]

Originally posted by Kurague:

Forget about the two axes. You need to 2-hand the sword at the beginning up until you can get the Bloodthirster. It deals as much damage as dual wielding the 2 axes, but without sucking in heavyattack damage.

It's also a one-handed sword, so it has the best heavy attack lunge in the game(Forward dashes and attacks in every attack). The Bloodthrister is also a one handed sword with inferno scaling, and it heals you with each kill.

PS: The reason why you feel like inferno is weak, is because the absolute genious developers decided to put all the Fire Resistant enemies at the start of the game. I highly recommend you up some radiance(18 max, maybe 23 if you want to get one of the big spells), since eventually you'll get a ring that'll allow you to cast RADIANT MAGIC with your pyromancy or Entropy focus, which means you'll get the full scaling of your Pyromancy stat spell focus for your radiance spells.

PS2: Radiance is DEFINITELY much stronger than inferno at all points of the game, by the way. There are just too many Radiance, Agi or Strength weapons in the game and so few Inferno weapons. It's almost like Developers didn't want you to play inferno.

Almost like inferno magic is the evil god Adyr's magic. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Yeah what is hurting me more than anything is that it feels like inferno just has fewer options than everything else

[Kurague]

Originally posted by Ostrava of Boletaria:

Originally posted by Kurague:

Forget about the two axes. You need to 2-hand the sword at the beginning up until you can get the Bloodthirster. It deals as much damage as dual wielding the 2 axes, but without sucking in heavyattack damage.

It's also a one-handed sword, so it has the best heavy attack lunge in the game(Forward dashes and attacks in every attack). The Bloodthrister is also a one handed sword with inferno scaling, and it heals you with each kill.

PS: The reason why you feel like inferno is weak, is because the absolute genious developers decided to put all the Fire Resistant enemies at the start of the game. I highly recommend you up some radiance(18 max, maybe 23 if you want to get one of the big spells), since eventually you'll get a ring that'll allow you to cast RADIANT MAGIC with your pyromancy or Entropy focus, which means you'll get the full scaling of your Pyromancy stat spell focus for your radiance spells.

PS2: Radiance is DEFINITELY much stronger than inferno at all points of the game, by the way. There are just too many Radiance, Agi or Strength weapons in the game and so few Inferno weapons. It's almost like Developers didn't want you to play inferno.

Almost like inferno magic is the evil god Adyr's magic. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Yeah what is hurting me more than anything is that it feels like inferno just has fewer options than everything else

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

Inferno is not only very limited in every way, but it sucks for early-mid game. After that it's just simply equal to radiance, but like I said, if you pick inferno, you have the perk of actually being able to cast Radiance spells with the inferno spell casting item.

Honestly, I would recommend you level up radiance up to atl east 23, and then get an Entropy magic catalyst with it's spells. This means you'll be able to cast radiant and inferno spells with the strongest scaling catalists in the game.(Umbral/Entropy catalysts scale off of both Radiance and inferno, and there's a ring that allows you to use Radiant spells on any catalyst, and another that allows for Inferno spells on any catalyst.
Since Umbral spells are low damage to balance out the fact that their catalysts scale x2, but Radiant and inferno spells are not...Well, you can put 2 and 2 together yourself.